Unruly Summon Chapter 33: Dreams (Patreon)

"Grysuurm. Hymern."

I opened my eyes but, as expected, didn't see very much. The dark fog swirling all around me made sure of that. I stooped and picked up a handful of ash, letting it fall between my fingers while I waited for what I knew was coming.

"Glyciir ga fo drivern."

And there it was. While the memory of the miasma poisoning and flame breath from last time had withered away to almost nothing minutes after waking, now that I was back, I could remember it all perfectly. The agony of being burnt alive and the utter hopelessness of trying to do anything about it.

Preferring there to not be a second time, I slunk off in the opposite direction to the voice.

Great booming laughter started up behind me.

"Valaruun. Kloi ka vita. Bylistrii. List ka thruuk."

"What did it say?"

I blinked at the sudden discontinuity. Why was there English in this dream?

"Focus on me. Repeat back exactly what it said."

"Valaruun. Kloi ka vita. Bylistrii. List ka thruuk," I repeated.

"Is that all?"

"I..." I started, wondering when I'd fallen over and where the fog had gone. "Huh?"

It took a few more blinks to realise I'd woken up for real. No light shone through the windows, so it must still have been night, but Wendy was in my room, scribbling on some paper.

"Is there anything else you remember?" she asked. "Hurry, before it fades."

"Why are you in my room?" I groggily asked.

"There's no time for that! Focus on the dream before it fades again."

"I tried to run away from the dragon. It laughed at me, then started talking, then you woke me up."

"Hmm..." said Wendy.

"What's going on?" asked Christine, entering too.

"Mmm... Did you dream again?" asked Mary, walking in in her nightie, rubbing her eyes.

"What's going on is that our hero had a nocturnal visitor," explained Wendy. "I'm glad I had the foresight to set up some detection spells, because they picked up telepathic communications. Some sort of dream walker."

"What?" I asked, pushing myself upright. "Uh... Wendy, why are you naked?"

"Because I got kicked out of the castle without my belongings, nightclothes included, but stop getting distracted. I'm telling you that someone was invading your dreams."

"That dragon was real?!"

"Well, I wouldn't go that far. There's a conscious individual involved, but they could appear in your dreams in whatever form they wished."

"It certainly looked like a dragon," I mumbled. "Not to mention felt."

"Historically, when dragons have been active, they've been... well... obvious," said Christine. "They don't skulk around talking to people in dreams. They invade kingdoms and burn things."

I glanced over at Christine, who was equally naked, presumably for the same reason. "Dragon or not, there are two problems. First, why? What's the purpose of invading my dreams and spouting incomprehensible gobbledygook at me? Second, how did they know? I had this dream on my first night, at which point the number of people who knew I'd been summoned should have been very tightly controlled."

"Trying to scare you off?" suggested Wendy.

"Maybe they expected to be understood, but your divine blessing doesn't work properly in the dream?" suggested Mary.

"Either way, we have something concrete now," said Wendy, holding up her sheet of paper. "We need to find a linguist to take a look at this. It's certainly not a language I recognise."

Christine and Mary peered over her shoulder. "Me neither," agreed Christine.

"It'll need to wait for the morning, and it's going to be a pain not having access to the castle's resources," sighed Wendy. "For now, there's a decision to make. I can block the communications, but do we want to? Whoever is contacting Thomas appears to be antagonistic, but further communications could provide us with further information."

"If they return, could you trace them?" asked Christine.

"No."

"Then block them. Given the difficulties in remembering concrete information from the dreams, they're too unreliable to use as an information source."

Wendy nodded and spent a few minutes doing complicated mana stuff around my bedroom, while I did my best to ignore the fact that she was still naked.

"Do you need a hug?" asked Mary.

"No thanks. Wendy woke me up before it got scary."

Mary did one of her cute pouts of disappointment.

"... Fine. Go on then," I said, caving.

Given that I was still in bed, the response was more of a cuddle than a hug.

I had a distinct impression that with every day here, my standards were slipping further. Despite my best efforts, I'd somehow ended up with three girls in my room, two of whom were naked while the third was cuddling me in my bed. Was this some part of the divine blessing of the hero? They all ended up with harems not because they were scumbags, but because the gods decreed it? Or was it further mechanisms of Dennis, somehow?

At least Mary hadn't tried to wash me when I took a bath before bed, even if it had been kinda lonely going in by myself, after the three girls had taken theirs together.

Bah. There was nothing wrong with a spot of wholesome cuddling. And of course it was common courtesy to close my eyes while Wendy worked; it wasn't her fault she'd been tossed out of the castle with no nightclothes.

That all made perfect sense. What made less sense was the way that, when I opened my eyes again, my room was brightly lit.

"Good morning, Master," said Mary. "Please could you release me? I need to prepare breakfast and your clothing for the day."

"Uh... Did I... fall asleep...?"

"Yup! You slept soundly all night!"

I wordlessly released her, and she hopped out of my bed and skipped happily out of my room.

... Wendy was never going to let me forget this. Maybe it would be possible to avoid her for the entire day? And the next, and the rest of the week, and probably the year, too.

By the time I made it to the breakfast table, where Christine was staring at a bowl of thin porridge as if she wasn't quite sure what to do with it, I thought the red tides of embarrassment had faded somewhat. Alas, all it took was a single smirk from Wendy to precipitate another wave of blushing.

"I was right yesterday," she declared. "You are impossibly pure. If only it was possible to fertilise crops with wholesomeness, you could single-handedly feed a nation."

"... I was tired," I countered.

"What outfit is that?" asked Christine, her subject change instantly scoring her very many points in my book despite it having all the subtlety of the sun on a cloudless midday. "I don't recognise it."

"No idea. I just put on what Mary gave me."

"I was given a small allowance for food and necessities yesterday," answered Mary, who was eating her porridge far more happily. "Since Master had no clothes of his own, I spent a few coins on him."

"And what about yourself? I note the uniform you're wearing has a dirty mark in exactly the same spot as yesterday's."

"Ah... They only let me keep the one," she answered.

"Think of yourself, too," I ordered. "Get yourself some clothes next time."

"There wasn't enough money. And even had there been more, I'd have spent it on food. I was only able to get enough to last until tomorrow."

"We need to deal with the money situation," sighed Wendy. "It's obvious the new king doesn't intend to pay Thomas enough for basic necessities. We'll need to compensate somehow. I'd suggest making a Miraculum staff and selling it to the demons, but with our current resources, we can't get the raw materials we need."

"Is it really that bad? How much is this worth?" I asked, dropping the previous day's bag of gold coins on the table.

"It'll feed the four of us for a week. Maybe two if we eat nothing but this gloop," answered Christine.

"Wow. That's counter-intuitive..." I complained. The coins were gold, for goodness' sake! Or at least gold coloured. Or perhaps gold was just cheap here.

"I would suggest signing up as slayers, but we'll be unable to devote the time it would require," said Christine.

"I bet the demons would pay up front if you offered them that staff. Or the dwarves or elves," I pointed out.

"True," agreed Wendy. "That's probably the best option, since it's something we want to do anyway."

"The fact we're having this conversation at all is ridiculous," I complained. "What the hell is King George thinking? It's not like we literally murdered his parents."

If anyone else had any more idea than I did about the king's thought processes, I didn't get to hear about it on account of a knock at the front door. Mary hopped down from the table to open it.

"Were we expecting anyone?" asked Wendy.

"Who knows?" answered Christine. "King George didn't see fit to give us more than the broadest outline of the plan last night. He mentioned having the effects of Miraculum checked and that he'd have Thomas circle the local area, but he didn't say whether he'd send someone to give us the results. Common sense would dictate he would, but it's equally possible he won't send anyone, hoping we will simply wait here for a liaison who will never come, so that he can charge us with dereliction of duty."

Mary opened the front door and screamed.

Christine vanished, reappearing at the front door with sword in hand. She hadn't had it at the table, but she struck me as the sort of person who would know where her weapons were at all times. I'd bet she'd stashed it somewhere easily accessible.

Much to my regret, I was a few steps behind. I may have declared myself stronger than Christine, but she still had me beat in a few areas, one of which was the ability to react to something like a scream without having to think about it. By the time I'd worked my way through the chain of logic, 'Mary opened the door and screamed, therefore she must have seen something threatening outside, therefore she is in danger, therefore I should protect her', Christine was already halfway there.

Another scream sounded from outside the front door, followed by a thump.

I arrived to find a young cat-girl sitting on her bum. "Ow!" she complained. "What's with that greeting, nya?! Weren't you expecting me, nya?"

"No," curtly answered Christine. "Who are you?"

"Minoru, nya! The white mage that was to be assigned to the hero as part of the peace treaty, nya!"

"What part of the peace treaty is that?" asked Christine.

"And why do you keep saying 'nya'?" asked Wendy, who'd wandered over to join us.

"The late King Edward promised to share the Miraculum spell with us, nya!"

"That's the first we're hearing about this," said Christine, eyes narrowing.

"... But not telling us does sound like the sort of petty thing King George would do," countered Wendy.

"I've got an official writ of passage, nya!" exclaimed Minoru, pulling out a bit of parchment and handing it over to Christine. That she was carrying something of the sort was no surprise; it had only been one day since the war ended. It was far too soon for a demon to be wandering around the humans' capital.

And I still wasn't sure about the term 'demon'. She was blatantly a cat-girl! She looked almost human, about Mary's age and dressed in a white, sleeveless dress that seemed slightly too short for her. The deep red of her lips and smoothness of her skin could have been a natural advantage her species had, or she could be the first person I'd seen wearing makeup.

... Maybe. Had the queen been wearing any when I'd barged into the throne room? It was possible, but my mind had been elsewhere at the time.

Makeup or not, the real differences started with her shoulder-length hair, which was an unnatural bright pink. Unlike Wendy's, there were no visible roots, suggesting it was her natural colour. An equally pink fluffy tail poked out behind her from beneath her dress, and a pair of cat ears atop her head twitched almost constantly.

"What are you looking at, nya?" she asked, catching me staring at her ears and smiling coyly. "Do you want to pet them, nya?"

I felt another blush launching itself upwards, on track to smash into my face in mere seconds.

"If you're trying to seduce him, don't bother," sighed Wendy. "He's the most wholesome hero in all of recorded history."

"Huh?" went Minoru, briefly looking confused, before switching her expression to a pout. "I'm not, nya! I'm just being friendly, nya!"

"Really? In that case, he probably does want to pet you, but in a completely platonic and innocent way."

"I'm quite capable of answering for myself, you know?" I pointed out, having spent the previous exchange wondering what the heck was happening and coming up with two theories, both rather horrifying in their own ways. "Minoru, no offence, but aren't you're a little young for this job? Given the amount of mana required by Miraculum, wouldn't a more experienced mage be better? Or is there perhaps another reason why you were chosen?"

"I know I can't cast it, nya! I'm just going to learn it, then teach it to everyone else back home, nya!"

That was reasonable. I still didn't have a great grip on how much mana the average mage could wield, but I guessed there were very few people around who could cast Miraculum. Maybe there weren't any. But that didn't mean there was no value in sending someone more experienced over to learn it.

"Were you assigned to this mission based on something Wendy said that Toby overheard, by any chance?" I asked, getting the least horrifying of my two theories out of the way first.

Minoru's look of uncertainty was enough to tell me my guess was correct.

Wendy snorted with laughter. "Seriously? He actually fell for that? Thomas just wanted to talk to me in private to discuss something that would have blown his disguise. Of course, the simple fact that he was asking was enough to spoil his cover, so I covered it up with the first thing that came to mind by implying he wanted to hump me."

The look of uncertainty grew.

"Why was that the first thing that came to mind?" I muttered.

"Look," continued Wendy, ignoring me. "If you want my advice, don't try to lie to him, mislead him, or tempt him. I can tell you from experience that it doesn't work, and has a tendency to backfire spectacularly. Just be open, honest and friendly, and as long as you're a generally nice person, you'll win him over in no time."

"Do you have to talk about me like I'm not here?" I complained, following up with a confused, "huh?" when Minoru grabbed my hand, placed it on her head and started rubbing, all while staring intently at my face.

Then her gaze moved down, carefully examining my crotch.

"Uh..." I said, not quite sure what was happening.

"Told you," snidely remarked Wendy.

Minoru sighed, releasing my hand. "Thank goodness," she declared. "I can stop doing that utterly ridiculous nya thing."